Russell fastest as Antonelli crash ends final practice early

A disrupted final practice still delivered the clearest pace signal of the weekend, and it belonged to Mercedes.

George Russell topped FP3 at Albert Park with a 1m19.053s, over six tenths clear of the field, before Kimi Antonelli’s heavy crash at Turn 2 ended meaningful running with ten minutes remaining. Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc held second and third at that point, Oscar Piastri fourth. The session restarted with four minutes on the clock but the top order held.

It was the statement Mercedes had been building toward. The team had run conservatively on Friday managing energy deployment (the control of electrical power from the MGU-K, the motor-generator unit central to lap time under 2026 regulations), and Russell had acknowledged overnight that more pace was available. Saturday morning confirmed it.

Antonelli’s crash was substantial. He lost the rear of his W16 over the kerb at Turn 2, hit the barriers hard on both sides of the track and left carbon fibre scattered across the circuit. He walked away, but the car sustained serious damage and his participation in qualifying was immediately in doubt.

Embed from Getty Images

Williams endured another damaging session. Carlos Sainz stopped on track for the second consecutive day, losing power approaching the pit entry and forcing a VSC (Virtual Safety Car, which obliges all drivers to reduce speed without halting the session) before a full red flag was called to recover the car. On Friday, Alexander Albon had retired from FP2 with a hydraulic failure. Two mechanical stoppages in two sessions for a team that arrived in Melbourne with one of the stronger pre-season reliability records on the grid.

At Aston Martin, the picture was grimmer still. Lance Stroll did not set a single timed lap, with engineers still working on his AMR26 as the session ran. The team entered Saturday with just two functional battery units after successive power unit failures on Friday, leaving both Stroll and Fernando Alonso effectively without meaningful preparation for qualifying. For Adrian Newey, starting his role as Aston Martin’s technical lead, the reliability crisis has defined the entire weekend.

The session had started 20 minutes late due to barrier repairs following a Formula 3 incident, and opened under a regulatory reversal. The FIA had moved overnight to remove the straight mode zone (the configuration allowing maximum power unit output across a flat, unrestricted section of track) through the Lakeside Drive stretch between Turns 8 and 9. After forceful team pushback, the governing body reversed course before FP3 began, forcing mechanics to undo overnight set-up work at short notice.

Qualifying follows a revised format in 2026, with six drivers eliminated in Q1 and six more in Q2 following Cadillac’s arrival as the eleventh constructor. Russell has set the benchmark. The rest must answer.